I thought that last one was some sort of parody of the real children's books. That's the impression I got. If it isn't, well that's interesting. But maybe I'm just biased and/or my mind is corrupted.

I thinks it's meant to be genuine, but without seeing an actual copy of the book it's hard to be certain - you could be quite correct (maybe I'm a little too credulous). I imagine it would be fine for kids as it is subtle enough that a child would not necessarily read into it the same things which an adult would. Just because many adults think of drugs and paedophilia when they read or see Alice In Wonderland, does not entail that younger children will think in these sorts of terms.It is not unheard of for modern children's stories and movies to contain elements which are put there to keep adults interested - perhaps it's some variation on this idea.

When I was a kid my favourite book was 'Mole in the City'. This was a Russian translation and republishing of the famous Czechoslovak children's series by Zdenek Miller. The artwork of the book matched that of the animated cartoons (with some minor changes, including giving the rabbit bigger eyes), and was exceptional.

I also very much enjoyed the watercolour artwork in the two alphabet books I got in my first year of school. Here are some pictures from them:

"The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG